So Much So Fast

So Much So Fast unfolds like a nonfiction novel. It spans the remarkable events set into motion when 29-year-old Stephen Heywood finds out he has the paralyzing neurological disorder ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). Filmed over the next five years, the film tracks one family's ferocious response to an orphan disease: a disease drug companies ignore because there is not enough profit in curing it. His brother, Jamie, launches a guerilla science-research group, Stephen races against his own time clock by getting married and having a baby, and the whole Heywood clan pitches in, with devotion, insight, and a very special brand of acerbic humor. Through every remission and setback, filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan are there, just as they were in their Sundance award-winning film Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern. Dedicated filmmakers with an uncanny eye for capturing drama in the most commonplace activities, their presence with a camera makes tangible the bonds between parents and children, husbands and wives, and siblings who are also best friends. We also witness scientific discovery and what happens when a group of renegade researchers goes up against the scientific establishment. What is it like to find out you may have only a few years to live? The answer, as lived by the Heywoods, is never what we expect.